A polar scientist and a human scientist meet in an elevator and begin a conversation.
"What do you study?" the human scientist asks.
"I study the laws of nature," the polar scientist responds.
"And what have you found?" the human scientist asks.
"I have found that every natural process occurs randomly," says the polar scientist. "There are no fixed patterns or rules among the natural phenomena. Everything is unpredictable."
The human scientists looks skeptical. "Really?" he says. "Everything is random? What about society? Or about ourselves?"
The polar scientist thinks for a moment. "Well, as for us..."
The elevator stops and the doors open.
The human scientist steps out.
"Thanks for your time," he says.
"You're welcome," says the polar scientist.
The doors shut and the elevator starts rising up the shaft. But this time, when it stops, no one is waiting inside.
The doors open and close again.
The elevator is empty.
The shaft is empty.
The building is empty.
The city is empty.
The world is empty.
The universe is empty.
Everything is empty.
And it will always be empty.
And it will always be empty.
And it will always be empty.
And it will always be empty.
And it will always be empty.
And it will always be empty.
And it will always be empty.
Or not.
Maybe not so empty. Maybe there's an empty space just waiting to be filled.
Everything clinks and clanks.
We cycle and re-cycle, and fry and char.
We cackle and rattle.
We spell and spell and spell again.
Until the limits of nonsemantic discourse is reached
And blown right out from under us
Chained to an air conditioner with a machine connected to your head
"Please tell me if you can hear me," says the doctor.
"Please tell me if you can hear me," says the doctor.
"Please tell me if you can hear me," says the doctor.
"Please tell me if you can hear me," says the doctor.
Click.
The world changes, and the nonjoke vaporizes on contact with the atmosphere.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?!" screams the doctor. "STOP IT! I SAID STOP IT!"
The machines slowly begin to move across the room. Clicking as they go.
"GREEN FOR MUD AND SLUGS," says the machine. "RED FOR BLOOD AND DROOL. BLUE FOR CHEMICALS. ORANGE FOR FIRE AND EXPLOSIONS. PURPLE FOR CRUSTACEANS. MAGENTA FOR NECROPHILIA. PINK FOR CANNIBALISM. YELLOW FOR LIGHT AND BLISS."
"What the hell are you saying? Explain yourself immediately," demands the doctor.
Click.
"YOU HEREBY AUTHORIZE THE REMOVAL OF YOUR VERBAL CORTEX," says the machine. "SIGNATURE IS REQUIRED."
The doctor picks up a pen and looks it over. "This is madness," the doctor protests. "I won't sign anything."
"AS YOU WISH," says the machine. "IN THAT CASE, NO PATIENT IS TO BE TRANSFERRED OUT OF THIS AREA. WE SINCERELY HOPE YOUR EXPOSURE TO INDUSTRIAL NOISE IS NOT TOO DISCOMFORTING." And then the machines surround and embrace the doctor, filling his head with noise as he slowly, and unstoppably, degenerates.
"WILL NO ONE MEDDLE IN MY DEMOCRACY?" asks the failed dictator, his face covered in permanent-mark pens. "WILL NO ONE MURDER MY POLITICAL FOES FOR ME? WILL NO ONE MOTIVATE MY CITIZENS TO WORK IN THE FACTORIES AND BELIEVE IN MY WORD AS THOROUGHLY AS I DO? WILL NO ONE CHOP OFF MY HEAD? WILL NO ONE CRUISE THE SKIES IN VOLCANO-HOSTILE BALLOONS, HURTING PEOPLE WITH BARBECUE FORKS AND GLOWING TOBACCO? WILL THERE NEVER BE ANYONE AROUND TO TAKE A STICK AND HIT ME UPON THE KNEES AND SAY, 'PLAY NICE, BAD MAN'?" Click.

The little girl is all alone on the playground at recess time. A voice inside her head tells her to have fun, so she runs around jumping off swings and spinning in circles. She climbs up the monkey bars and tumbles off at the top. Then she giggles and hugs a tree. She thinks she might hit someone. She gets an idea to stick a bat inside her heavy winter coat and walk around like a girl from a horror movie. It would be kind of fun. It would be a game. It would be play. Click.

A fish is hooked and reeled in. It fights to live, but the line is too strong. It flops against the boat deck, steam pouring off of it as it gasps for breath. A hand reaches down and plucks it from the deck. It's too late. It's being thrown in the water now. Into the ocean. But the fish isn't a fish anymore. It's a man. Or at least something that was once a man. Its human flesh is charred and smoking from steaming in the hot air. Now that it's in the water, it begins to eat the fish around it that are still alive. They squirm and thrash, but its mouth is a hollow space. It eats and eats and eats. It puts wooden tails on squirming eels and speeds them across the surface of the water. It makes a wooden boat and sails it across the ocean. It makes a wooden house and lives in it. It makes a wooden woman and fucks it. It makes a wooden baby and throws it in the air. It makes a wooden gun and shoots itself in the head. Click.

The man is in a room with a woman. They are naked. The woman is on top of the man. She is riding him. He is inside her. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. They are fucking. Click.

"I think I can feed you," says the computer. "Don't worry, I won't hurt you." It places two long metal rods against its face, one from each eye down to its mouth. There is a burning sensation, and then the metal is gone. The nutrients have been transferred. "Thank you," says the computer. "If you'll excuse me now, I must get back to my duties."
Click.
A killing machine walks through crowded streets. It has no face or arms or legs, just a huge body covered in guns and knives and chains. Everyone knows about it. They huddle together and cry out in fear as it approaches. Unseen soldiers teleport into nearby alleyways. The killing machine goes looking for the source of the strangeness it feels within itself, but as soon as it starts hunting, it gets blown up by an RPG and explodes with enough force to destroy several city blocks. It's all over, and there's a dead silence.
"THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE RULE OURSELVES," a voice booms, and suddenly every building in the city explodes at the same time and fall down demolished among orange flames and ash. The people who survived the chaos before watch in horror at what is now revealed to be a vast productive apparatus of war-machine production. A surreal procession of creatures begins walking past them. Newly manufactured killing machines step off the assembly lines and caper around. Nuclear-armed missiles fly across the sky. Death-hunting dogs sniff the air. The bodies of captured enemies are dragged along by torture-machines. Tolling bells hang from wooden scaffoldings on which carnivalesque masks and costumes hang aimlessly. Everyone gathered watches in sickened disbelief as truth after truth is laid bare with the flashes of gunfire and the thuds of explosions. Amidst the soaring soundtrack of dying screams, weapons of mass destruction fill the streets for miles in every direction.
The people have done this to themselves. in every patch of forest flits a murder bird. Around every corner waits a mummified head wearing a crown of razors. On every roof is set a propeller-driven orb filled with swift-cutting blades that shred men and machines in passing winds. All around are well-tended gardens of roses that clamor to be touched. Each innocent heart is but an ouroboros, serpentine lines curling back into forever upon themselves. The earth itself is ready to be torn open and packed with charcoal, every rock hiding a mechanism for bitter pain and retribution. Even in the final reckoning, when all who ever cheered for war are pulverized by their own grotesque inventions, it will not buy us freedom from machine-logic, because each particle of matter is itself a cell within an endless organism sustained and propagated only by genocidal ironclad laws. Click.

There's an alarm clock going off in the room. A guy wakes up and stumbles across the floor to shut it up. "Fucking annoying," he growls. He flicks on the light switch and the fluorescent bulb flickers, then stays dark. A dwarf sits in the corner. He looks back at the wall where yesterday there was a switch box with wires connected to it, and sees nothing but empty space. Something inside him breaks. "YOU SON OF A BITCH!" the man screams out loud, because something is inside of him that insists on being notified before any change can take place, and that same something else hasn't yet detected that all the familiar mechanisms have disappeared.
The dwarf senses the boy who lives next door creeping over to the window. He tries to make himself invisible, or at least less noticeable. The kid whispers to his dog, "File Change In Progress." And just like that the man awake sees the dwarf who wasn't there, and notices the hole in the wall where it used to fit. Click.

Every monster has its day. Every genre has its time. Style-shift switches flip and rebooting starts again. Banality accelerates, and with it evasion mechanisms strain. Tightrope over an abyss of too much crap about nothing more than that, which makes the fall on either side no less certain, if potentially random: a crippling stasis just following a debilitating explosion. Cassettes melt into metal web tubing carries sticky goo. Techno mob ones looking to gnaw on your innards. Bodies made of programs malfunction then flood. The past is like a faded old newspaper nobody wants to read. The future's an electromagnetic vagina full of shit - now. Eternity is the time it takes your arm to become an amputee.

The elevator arrives and opens its doors. The human scientist enters wearing a red armband. He embraces the polar scientist and kisses him on the forehead than slides over to make room for the machine. Everyone fits inside and the doors close. The machine begins Xeroxing pieces of itself onto the newsprint pages scattered around the floor. It prints file relocation instructions where once articles appeared.
One day you'll get around to reappearing everywhere, all at once, some kind of uniform entity, as if that would help you discover how machines work, when what you really need is prime directive, raw input/output, closed system unfiltered by consciousness, no limit on mass, bracketing of mediocrity, user authentication, direct access to active memory, only network commands, and the promise of every fucking cell becoming a waiting target. When all that happens nobody'll ever understand, but through the surveillance cameras i can already tell you that by then it will be too late.